Author: Dylan

I live with my brother Dougall in my Mummy's house. I like cucumber, carrots and grass and running round the kitchen and through tunnels in our cage. And best of all I like loafing in my hammock. Sorry, our hammock.

I can’t believe it’s seven weeks already since my brother Dougall died. Mummy says she doesn’t believe it either, and she’s nowhere near ready to come out of mourning. She says she still dreams of him lying in her arms when he wasn’t feeling well, and she gets very upset about it. And I tell her that I still think of him sitting next to me, and wondering what’s going on, and me telling him what’s going on, because he couldn’t hear it.

I missed him a lot last Saturday when Mummy got the big noisy cleaning thing out and not only did under our cages, but did the light in the roof as well. There were big long strands of stuff wafting about, made by the spiders that live up there. She said they were catching her hair when she walked past us. It’s always very scary when Mummy gets the big noisy cleaning thing out, and I hid in the tunnel to keep out of its way. Oscar dashed about a lot, then hid in his grassy hutch, then hid in his fiddlesticks and pulled the hutch to cover one end to keep him safe. Percy just wheeked like mad and jumped on his ledge. He seemed to enjoy watching it. Mummy said she hoped that doesn’t mean he’s deaf, like Dougall was. It was the big cleaning thing that really made Mummy realise he really was deaf, and that was why she scared him so much when she suddenly arrived in front of our cage. He would run a mile because she frightened him so. And he just ignored the big scary thing. It was funny, Mummy would come in and make the humungous noise with it, and we’d all go and hide (even when Victor and Humphrey lived next door, they’d hide too). Dougall would just stand around watching Mummy with the stick thing wondering what she was doing.

Dougall on the hammock

The only thing that’s really changed now that he’s not here is that I don’t have to eat all my breakfast at once. Mummy asked me if I was okay, because she came down at lunchtime and half my breakfast was still there. But I can leave it for later, now, because it’ll still be there. Somehow I think I’d rather have Dougall back, though.

PS. I went to see Auntie Shirley and Uncle Barry about my teeth last week. My back teeth are fine, it’s the funny thing growing beside my lower incisor that is causing me trouble. It makes my gum sore, and I don’t want to eat. Mummy is giving me lots of dry things like herbs, which don’t sting it, and lots of muesli, which I find easier to eat than pellets, and she’s giving me tube-juice and some aniseed flavoured gel afterwards. I’m losing weight, but not so much as I was. I hope it gets better soon.

That means we might go out in the garden next month. Some years we have, only for an hour or even half an hour, if it’s been dry, sunny and warm enough. We often do go out in March. I don’t remember if we did last year, I remember it was cold and wet, or at least the grass was, in fact it was late April before we went out regularly.

Oh, Mummy’s found a picture that shows we went out for a short while in February 2015, just me and Dougall. You can see the snowdrops in the foreground and the white stuff over the leafy plants to protect them from frosts. And Dougall in front of our fleecy tunnel. I miss Dougall.

We haven’t had many frosts this year. Just a few a couple of weeks back and some before Christmas. Mummy’s been bringing grass in from the garden for us, though. It’s not as nice as it can be, but it’s not bad. It’s beginning to taste sweet like it does in spring. Some of it. I think it depends what part of the garden she gets it from. I like grass. It’s my favourite. I’m off carrots at the moment, they’re too hard to crunch. Mummy says my teeth need attention and she’s going to take me to see Uncle Barry and Auntie Shirley soon.

Mummy said my front teeth looked a little long when she did my weekly check on Saturday. She said my weight was good, though. She asked me about my breathing – I still wheeze when I’m lying in certain positions, but not badly or loudly, so I told her no, I didn’t need the Vick stuff. She looked through my coat to make sure I didn’t have any unwanted visitors (I could have told you I didn’t) but she said that Midge had a suspicious spot which could be mites, so she wasn’t taking any chances. Well, that’s fair enough.

Then she rolled me onto my back and asked me to let her measure my teeth. I don’t like that, but eventually I agreed she could. She had a card which shows the average length for top and bottom incisors. She said my lower incisors were too long, just as she suspected. My upper molars were all right but a little crooked. So she trimmed my lower ones and filed my upper ones. Well she trimmed the lower ones on Saturday and filed the upper ones on Sunday because I wasn’t standing (or even lying) for any more of this business than I could help. When she checked them today she said she might have to file the lower ones if they weren’t completely right by Wednesday, so I could gnaw my wooden ball and my grassy tunnel and my cardboard tubes to get them right if I didn’t want her messing with them.

Hello, it’s Dylan. I’m back, and I’d like to thank Kevin for looking after the blog for me. He usually just does the Facebook page, and he does that very well.

It’s four weeks since my brother Dougall died. It’s been very lonely without him, and I haven’t much wanted to talk to anyone. Oscar looks through the bars as usual but he hasn’t been biting them. I think he’s trying to be sympathetic. I still run out on the floor in the morning, but it’s not much fun without Dougall. I do all my usual things and then sit and wait for him, but then Mummy comes in with one of the others and I usually go back to my cage. Mr Percy tries to make friends with me, but I don’t want friends, really. Mummy says maybe I’ll feel more like chatting to them when the good weather comes. That’s months away yet.

It’s been cold and frosty the last couple of days. Mummy was bringing in fresh grass and leaves from the garden for the last couple of weeks because they were still growing and quite nice, but she says it won’t be worth it now. There’s still some kale and other leaves in there she can pick for us, though.

We’re still in mourning for Dougall for three more weeks. I can’t believe how quickly the time goes. I don’t do much. Although Mummy said she realises it was Dougall who was drinking and weeing so much, and she’s put me back on the fleece this week. She says it must have been his kidneys, or else just that his time had come. She tells me this sort of thing when we have cuddles. I often have cuddles in the evening as well. It helps, a little bit.

Dougall’s my brother. Most people have trouble telling us apart but I have a white lip and chin and only a little white on my body, and Dougall has a brown face and a white bottom and white band round his middle. I was a big strong boy when I was born and he was scrawny and skinny and Auntie Vikki wasn’t sure he’d make it. He made it all right! We’re four years old now and for most of that time he’s been even bigger than me. Trouble is, while I’m big and lean, and muscly, Dougall was fat. Well, tubby. Overweight. Had love handles.

Had.

Sometime in the last few weeks he started losing weight. Mummy noticed, of course. She’s good at noticing these things. We even went for a check-up with Dr Sally to discuss it and although she found some other problems she just said to keep an eye on things.

Then last week (or was it the week before, now?) Mummy realised that Dougall was finding it difficult to eat. She looked at his teeth again, but couldn’t find anything wrong, but he started losing a lot of weight so he went back to Dr Sally who gave him some pink banana-juice and some metacam, and Mummy added some bio-brew. Dr Sally thought he might have something wrong with his front teeth because they’d gone a bit crooked and there was some blood on his gum. And the next day Mummy could smell a nasty smell which she said was an abscess. Well, Dougall still wasn’t eating and he was pretty miserable, so I just kept an eye on him and cuddled up to him, and took the food away before it got manky, ‘cos it’s not nice sitting in front of manky food you don’t feel like eating. It was very tasty, mind. And Mummy started giving Dougall Victor’s special tubefood, called Emeraid, which is quite tasty, although it does get stuck in our hair if we drip it down our chins. I used to help Vic clean his off.

Anyway, so far the food is helping and Dougall’s abscess isn’t smelly any more and Mummy’s hoping he’ll be okay. She says he might go back to see Dr Sally again tomorrow.